“Have you heard of the way and the [[word]],
“Have you heard of the way and the word,
Of Barogue the City that [[Roved?]]“Have you heard of the way and the word,
Of Barogue the City that Roved?
Of it’s ponderous gate and it’s terrible [[weight,]]
“Have you heard of the way and the word,
Of Barogue the City that Roved?
Of it’s ponderous gate and it’s terrible weight,
And of all of the greatness it [[towed?]]
Then gather round children and I’ll tell you the [[tale,]]
Then gather round children and I’ll tell you the tale,
Of the Sister, her Emperor and his [[Jewel]]. Then gather round children and I’ll tell you the tale,
Of the Sister, her Emperor and his Jewel.
And of the city that waits resigned to it’s [[fate,]]
Then gather round children and I’ll tell you the tale,
Of the Sister, her Emperor and his Jewel.
And of the city that waits resigned to it’s fate,
A still and ardent [[crucible.]]
Barogue was a wonder and a wail all in [[one,]]
Barogue was a wonder and a wail all in one,
And it screamed across the dunes of the [[sea]],
Barogue was a wonder and a wail all in one,
And it screamed across the dunes of the sea,
It’s ten thousand engines sang a [[claxon,]] Barogue was a wonder and a wail all in one,
And it screamed across the dunes of the sea,
It’s ten thousand engines sang a claxon,
Of long and lurid [[suffering...]]”
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|sample1)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[Dystopia Rising: Texas]]
|sample2)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[Lone Star Skies Presents]]
|sample3)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")+(css: "font-size: 250%;")[**THE LOST CITY**]]
|sample4)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[[Wake up in Barogue]]]
|sample5)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[ ]]
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}Your eyelids are crusted shut with grit. Your entire body aches as if you’d just fallen through a hole in an enormous, hollow sand dune.
[[Oh wait.]]
Briefly, you recall the panicked last few hours as you made your haphazard getaway from the largest leviathan you think, perhaps, to ever exist. You recall it’s huge trifurcated mouth, studded with enamel and crystal in equal, gory measure grinding through rock and bone like ten thousand hot knives through butter.
[[Open your eyes.]]
You reach up and rub the sand from your eyes with the back of your hand and, when you open them, the light is dim nearly to pitch. From your position on your back,flat with arms and legs akimbo - the only source of light are the narrow pinpricks some hundreds of feet above you where, you realize, you must have recently fallen through the shell of this place.
[[Groan and sit up.]]Your skull aches fiercely, as does the rest of your body. By all accounts, and what sloppy math you can do with half a concussion, the fall ought to have rendered you a sticky red stain on the sand.
But when you sit up with an authentic groan, your bones are straight as they have ever been and you can see alright - despite the darkness. Your teeth ache, for some reason.
[[Look around. Get your bearings.]]
You glance around the cavernous, silent chamber of which you feel very much a prisoner, and begin to see the shapes of buildings coalescing in the dark, as your eyes adjust.
Looking up, you realize that the exterior dune must actually be the accumulated mud, sand and krem of half a millenia - covering what is now obviously the largest roll cage you have ever seen or, for that matter, bothered to imagine.
Bars of iron, or steel or carbon you could not say, crisscross one another in a latticework that extends from horizon to gray horizon. Dimly, you can see one end of the city’s dome terminate in thousands of tonnes of super compacted sand - the other is entirely too far to see past the gloom.
[[Stand up.]]
As you struggle to your feet, slapping off the excess dust, you notice the dozens - perhaps hundreds, of other members of your expeditionary force who themselves lie supine and barely conscious. Like you, though, they open their eyes dazedly and struggle to verticality before shuffling into groups, then crowds.
Someone strikes a match and lights a torch, followed by a few others. In the soft relief of the firelight you see the sandstone facades of buildings made after a different fashion than you’ve seen before. With round windows and smooth sidings, they seem to be fused to the floor of this place. The door of the nearest building, a sliding bronze affair, still glows dimly as if eons of sand have served only to shine it.
[[Wander a little.]]
You do. You take one of the torches, which are being handed out by helpful expeditionary tradesfolk, and press into the velvety darkness where you expect no living thing has been for hundreds of years.
For a moment, you consider that oldness is not what makes a place unique and valuable. As you live in a very old world indeed. But perhaps,it is instead it’s context, that makes a discovery like this matter.
[[Forge onward into the dark.]]You pass through streets which are clearly streets, paved with sandstone houses on either side. Some, with glass still set into the windows, and their gardens dead but undisturbed, look as if their owner left perhaps two days ago, not two centuries.
Once, you think you smell baking bread. But that’s impossible.
[[Reach a dead end.]]
You reach one, turn around, and find many other dead ends in the vast and organic labyrinth of Barogue. The sand, centuries of the stuff, has rendered most of the city unpassable. You turn around - and around again, but eventually you find yourself again among the other Survivors, some of whom have begun to establish a base camp beneath the distant pinpricks of sky which; even now seem further away than they did when you first awoke.
You realize that you cannot hear the Sand Leviathan anymore. You realize that, despite the rancor of battle that claxoned earlier, that the Lost City of Barogue is entirely silent. You realize this as your stomach growls and for the second time since you fell into this dark and quiet pit, you smell something cooking.
[[But there are no cook fires among the Survivors.]]
OOC: Welcome to Barogue! It’s a sandy ruin! The chat rooms should have all updated at midnight. You found the Lost City! Let’s hope it shouldn’t have stayed that way!
<3
DRTX